To say I am amazed is not doing the English language justice, 6000 Miles
from Ms to AK must have been via a round about route indeed. My Driving
recollections would guess it is more like 3800 miles from St. Lou to
Anchorage... But then I was not in your mini van or shoes...
However the real comment is this, why don't you just get a 40 dollar
inverter, plug it into the ciggie lighter hole or hard wire it and you have
all the commercial type (117VAC) power you need, I ran one in my semi for
years, have one in my Dodge Nitro and it powers my Dell Laptop, The HP
printer/scanner I use for my business, charges my cell phone, razor and
anything else I need up to a 800 watts of power. Rather than trying to re
invent the wheel, why not use the technology that is available, and in
common usage by almost every truck driver in the USA.
DE Jack KD1PE
I was able to run that computer charging off
> my wife's Ford minivan for the 6000 mile trip from MS to AK in spring
> of 2004. The vehicle voltage is damped by the car's battery and runs
> about 14.2 volts when the engine is running and sags to 13.2v when
> off. I never had the computer running when starting the engine. The
> computer battery will also act as a huge capacitor for smoothing out
> any voltage spikes.
>> Most cigarette lighters circuits have a 15 to 20 amp fuse on
> them. That ought to work fine for charging/using with your computer.
>> 73, Ed - KL7UW
>